29th
April 1992: The Muslim village of Alinchipotanai was attacked by 30-40 members
of the LTTE about mid-night on 29th April 1992. 27 policemen
and 12 homeguards attached to the police post fled into the jungle-the only
resistance being offered by the Sub-Inspector who was badly wounded. In the
orgy of killing and looting that followed, 69 died, five of them babies. Of
the 148 families in the village 4O were directly affected. The attack ended
about 3.30 A.M. The army which was camped in Welikanda 8 miles away arrived
in the village between 7.00 & 7.30A.M.

About 6.OO A.M. Muslim policemen and
homeguards who had fled to the jungle during the LTTE attack returned
to lead reprisals against the neighbouring Tamil village of Muthugala (125 families,
about 65O people). Once again there was killing and looting. 24 men and 25 women
were killed instantaneously. Of the 17 hospitalised, one later died. Sinhalese
homeguards from Madurangala and policemen from Karapola were involved in one
incident where 6 Tamils were killed and dumped into an irrigation canal. Much
later, about 11.OO A.M Mahaveli Development Board officials arrived in a vehicle
and with the help of a villager called out other survivors who were hiding in
the jungle.

About 7.OO A.M the Tamil village of
Karapola, a mile from Alinchipotana was attacked by Muslim homeguards from the
latter. The attackers broke into 3 groups and attacked people on the road and
inside houses. The number killed was 38 (17 men,15 women and 6 children) When
a couple complained at the local police post, they were blindfolded, beaten
and tied up. The policemen then went to the couples house nearby, picked up
6 men who had taken refuge there, kept them in the sun and beat them up. A police
party from Welikanda, alerted by the Mahaveli Authority, came to the village
with an ambulance about 1O.OO A.M.

There were two other events of significance.
A team of doctors had arrived from Polonnaruwa to perform post mortems at Alinchipotanai.
Though requested by the police, the doctors declined out of fear to perform
post mortems in the Tamil village. They had been told by the police that they
should reveal to no one what they had spied. The bodies from the Tamil villages
later taken to Polonnaruwa hospital by the army were found to have besides cuts
and bullet wounds,in some cases, portions of the ears and noses ripped off for
the ear-rings and nose rings.

The army had arrived at Karapola about
6.3O A.M, in 5 vehicles and an evidently high ranking officer had asked an elder
whether he was aware that there had been a massacre at Alinchipotanai, before
going past Muthulala to Alinchipotanai [(1) below argues that this must
have been the case, but does not mention, as seems likely, the this is the same
group of the army which arrived there about 7.OO A.M or after]. This would imply
that the army both saw and passed the homeguards and policemen attacking or
about to attack the Tamil villages and did not stop it.

15th October 1992: About 300 members
of the LTTE including women cadre attacked the Muslim villages of Palliyagodelle,
Pangurane, two ancient villages, and their satellite villages Akbarpura and
Ahamedpura, all northwest of Alinchipotanai. Owing to past LTTE attacks,
these villages had a sentry point manned by 1O army personnel and two platoons
making up a total of 52 policemen. These battled the attackers, according to
(3), until their ammunition ran out. One set of attackers looted and
massacred, while others in a cordon around the villages, warded off reinforcements
and airforce helicopters. They left at 7.30 A.M after airforce planes arrived.

Palliyagodelle had borne the main
brunt of the Tiger attack. 90 injured were taken to Medirigiriya hospital, 8
miles away, 40 being dead up on admission.

Although men seem to have been the main targets, a
number of women and children were killed. In one case a group of attackers seeing
a woman and her children cowering, remarked at it and wanted to leave with the
loot. One from the group then shot the mother saying that she had recognised
him and this may lead to repercussions for his own family. The mother survived.
Some of the attackers were said to be very young.

All events mentioned are connected.
What was very unusual about the first attack on Alinchipotanai was that civilians
from the neighbouring Tamil villages are said to have come with the attackers
- including women and children. With the Muslim homeguards and policemen who
attacked the Tamil villages came children to do the looting.

These are the bare facts of the massacres
taken from two reports compiled by fact finding missions sent by the International
Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo. They are:

(1) The Welikanda Massacre, (2) The Medirigiriya Massacre.

The two reports establish the basic
facts, have placed on record a number of testimonies from survivors, have ascribed
responsibility for these violations and have made several useful observations
and recommendations.

Independently of this, work has been
done by a group of Muslim intellectuals and students aiming at unravelling the
social intricacies of the area, the impact on these of the clash of ideologies
at national level and the resulting impossible position of Muslims of the area.
The import of this work is long term in nature.It also lays bare the manipulative
actions of the security forces which helped to drag the Muslims into a conflict
not of their seeking, and finally left them as clay pigeons. We have been given
a draft of this manuscript which we shall refer to as (3).

When a series of events like this
intervene, the idyllic picture of village life is shattered. The news is flashed
across the worlds airwaves by correspondents in Colombo, often quoting
official security spokesmen. Thus the news of the Muthugala and Karapola massacres
of Tamils came nearly a day later than that of the Alinchipotanai massacre,
although when the army first visited the area the Muthugala massacre was evidently
in progress, and the Karapola massacre was about to happen.

Next the foreign correspondents visit
the area and perhaps some NGOs. Then the world for all practical purposes turns
its back on them. (3) says of Palliyagodelle that it seldom saw any vehicles
except at election meetings and during police missions. The incidents would
somehow leave outsiders with an impression that the people are themselves hopelessly
barbaric. When two neighbours quarrel, both suffer a loss of dignity. Ultimately
in supposedly the interests of greater causes, people who asked for so little
in life and have suffered so much, are driven to ruin, scrummaging among the
debris of their former existence. Little is ever understood about the manipulation
of their sensibilities and fears, originating from way beyond the confines of
their villages, which rendered them largely victims. It is the attempt to
tackle this aspect that is most commendable in (3). The statements recorded
in (1) & (2) do assure us that these people are human.

Drawing largely on these three sources,
we put down some thoughts. Finally the questions arise, do we really understand?
and when talking to these people, were the right queries made to further understanding?

Alinchipotanai, Muthugala and Karapola
are 3 villages of the Polonnaruwa District in the vicinity of the east bank
of the river Mahaveli and about 4 miles NNE of Mannampitiya. In earlier times
these villages were inhabited by people making a living through chena (cut,
burn and sow) cultivation of rice, only possible during rainy seasons, together
with river and tank fishing. There was then no friction. Following the cyclone
of November 1978 which devastated the East, the 3 villages changed sites retaining
their former names. The Muslim village of Alinchipotanai moved from the bank
of the river Mahaveli to the former site of one of the Tamil villages. This
was a response to a natural disaster and no hard feelings were involved.

During the mid-eighties these villages
came under the Mahaveli scheme, with each family receiving 2 acres for rice
cultivation and ½ an acre for a homestead. This allowed the villagers two seasons
of cultivation and therefore greater prosperity. Social relationships and commercial
transactions between Tamils and Muslims continued normally. According to (3)
the prosperity of Tamils declined for reasons of social habits such as drinking
and also because of their inability to trade directly with the Sinhalese in
nearby towns. This meant that trade was through Muslims who had a commercial
relationship with the Sinhalese. Although lands under the Mahaveli Authority
cannot be sold for a number of years, several Tamils who fell into hard times,
about 5O families in number, unofficially mortgaged their lands to Muslims.
Some of these families seem to have subsequently left the area for the Eastern
Province, while others worked their lands as labourers for Muslim creditors.
This was perhaps the beginning of an undercurrent of resentment.

The essentially good relations between
Tamils and Muslims held until the LTTEs massacre
of Muslims in Kattankudy in early August 1990, particularly in the weeks following
the outbreak of war in June 199O, when Tamils moving about the area were in
grave danger from the security forces on the lookout for Tamils to assuage their
anger against the LTTE . Our Reports No. 4, 5 &
7 recorded several disappearances of Tamils from the area about that
time.

(3) says that on several occasions
after the July 1983 anti- Tamil riots, the Muslims had acted as good neighbours
to the Tamils. During this period the armed forces used to harass Tamils during
round ups and sometimes caused grave physical harm. Tamils often ran into the
Muslim village at the approach of the forces and were duly protected. At the
outbreak of the war of June 1990 two bus loads of Tamils going from Jaffna to
Batticaloa were overtaken by events in that area. They left the main road and
drove into Alinchipotanai where the Muslims provided them with cooking facilities
and shelter.

The group of 4 villages including
Palliyagodelle were cut off from Tamils, were sited on the west bank of the
Mahaveli and their external relations were mainly with Sinhalese. These too
were not strong, as the Sinhalese were newcomers brought under the Mahaveli
scheme. The population of 4000 as described earlier were poor, & families
were large. Education was up to grade 6, less than 5 persons with G.C.E. A.Level
passes and not a single degree holder. Their income was derived from farming
and livestock breeding. The villages were surrounded by thick jungle.

According to the authors of (3) these villages which
bordered the jungle lay astride a communication route from the North to the
East used by Tamil militant groups. Muslims who went into the jungle in connection
with checking livestock, chena cultivation and firewood collection did often
encounter Tamil militants. As long as they were believed to keep such meetings
to themselves, which they of necessity did, there was no room for conflict.
It is also likely as elsewhere in the East, that Muslims provided some essentials
to the militants and at least reluctantly paid taxes. The reluctance appears
to have been greater in Palliyagodelle which was more a Sinhalese area.

From 1984 a conscious effort was made
by the state to use existing tensions to foment a Tamil - Muslim cleavage as
a means of containing the Tamil insurgency in the East. Matters were not improved
by indiscipline among Tamil groups as well as by agent provocateurs brought
in from outside. The foreign press associated a prominent Colombo - based Muslim
cabinet member with the latter.

The LTTEs attacks on
Muslims culminating in the Kattankudy and Eravur massacres of August 1990 created
an impossible situation. The security forces used the opportunity to start arming
Muslims of the area.

(3) states in effect: Muslims who showed reluctance to accept weapons
provided by the forces were intimidated by being branded terrorists. One Muslim
youth, it says, was held at the Mannampitiya army camp for no reason and released
3 months later. Shortly after the arming of Muslim homeguards, on 22nd
November 199O, the LTTE shot and injured two villagers in Allinchipotanai.
The following day the army set up camp in the village ostensibly to protect
the Muslims.

This was followed by the army going regularly from the Muslim
village to the Tamil villages, harassing civilians and sometimes returning with
young men. The latter were then subject to physical mistreatment, some of whom
joined the ranks of the disappeared. On another occasion, following some peculiar
circumstances involving a few individuals, 3 Muslim home guards accompanied
the army to a temporary jungle camp of the militants resulting in one militant
killed and the goods at the camp taken away.

After deepening the cleavage between the Muslims of Alinchipotanai
and the neighbouring Tamil villages, and having done everything possible to
label the Muslims unfairly as informers, the army withdrew its camp at Alinchipotanai
on 13th July 1991. This was replaced by a police platoon of up to
3O men. During this period Muslims had understandably become negligent in the
payment of taxes demanded by the LTTE. In some instances idividual Muslims
had identified Tamils connected with the LTTE. Uncharacteristically,
the army took them in and released them. This was seen as deliberate.

The drift of the LTTEs approach to the Muslims
and its purely instrumental approach to the Eastern Tamils, whose real problems
were not addressed by the LTTE, have been covered in a separate section of this
report [6.4]. But once on a course of deliberate
brutalization of relations with Muslims, matters like massacres and ethnic
cleansing for security reasons, assume a logical necessity.
As in the case of these massacres, there was also total callousness towards
local Tamils. They were left unprotected and isolated to face the wrath of all
surrounding interests.

This is a real problem concerning both Tamils and Muslims in
the East although the LTTEs interest in it was mostly instrumental.
We have observed inSpecial
Report No.3, Report
No.7,and Chapter 2 of this
report the general drift of state sponsored colonisation. The general strategy
is to push Sinhalese colonies eastwards from the interior towards the coast.
In the course of this local Tamils and Muslims suffer from triple disadvantages.
These are loss of land, loss of physical security and loss of control over water
resources, key to their economic existence.

The states agenda progresses
through violence, administrative manoeuvring and attrition. The unplumbed psychic
damage done to the people of the area, the resulting brutalisation and the actions
of state forces have conspired to set the scene for massive human rights violations.

The villages in question are part of
the Mahaveli settlement scheme that is pushing eastwards using huge sums of
borrowed money from the world bank and the West. The villages in the incidents
are old villages whose inhabitants received land under the scheme. At the same
time there is an induction of a large number of Sinhalese settlers from elsewhere.
(3) states that Muslims feel that in consideration of the Tamil insurgent
response that would inevitably have sympathy from the Tamil villages, in this
instance the Muslims were being used as a buffer between the Tamil villages
and Sinhalese settlements. The behaviour of the army, police and the Sinhalese
homeguards towards the Tamil villagers in this instance is the reflection of
an old story. The Tamil villages to the east of this area, ranging down from
Trincomalee to Valaichenai suffered total devastation from army and Sinhalese
homeguard violence between 1984 and the arrival of the IPKF. Most Tamil villages
were destroyed and their inhabitants rendered refugees.

The Muslims of the area know that under
this dispensation they would ultimately suffer utter deprivation and perhaps,
even state violence. But now a combination of events - the manipulation of the
state and of Muslim interests in Colombo, together with the brutal bankruptcy
of the Tamil militancy - have placed the Muslims uncomfortably and unwillingly
in the position of appearing a buffer to serve the interests of the state.

A particular well-informed account
of how state policy works in the region is given by D.P. Sivaram in his
article The strangling of Menkamam  in the North-East
Herald of January - February 1993.

This ethos gave rise to a generation
of Tamil youth in the area who felt that they were with their backs to the wall.
The LTTE thus mobilised youth from rural areas with real grievances.
The late LTTE leader Pulendran is an instance of the archetype
that emerges from a culture that drives people to embrace the motto kill
or be killed.

This is one aspect of the barbarism seen at Alinchpotana
and Palliyagodelle. For the local Tamils of the region, rendered refugees or
living as if under siege, almost anything connected with colonisation touches
off a violent chord. The international community which has funded these colonisation
schemes in the absence of political safeguards for the minorities, should share
some of the responsibility for this state of affairs.

The causes of this seem less problematic. Tensions
between these villages and the LTTE had been in the making for years.
The LTTE had been demanding taxes which were grudgingly paid -these people
had absolutely no stake in the Eelam struggle - and cattle were occasionally
taken away. During the rapprochment with the government, the villagers complained
to the forces about tax demands. On coming and discovering that the group asking
for tax was the LTTE and not the EPRLF as they had presumed, they
chatted with the tax men and departed. (3) continues, Soon after
the massacre of Muslims at Kattankudy and Eravur in 199O, the government issued
(more) shotguns to the villagers. These were more than enough to sharpen enmity
between the LTTE and the villagers, but far from adequate to defend the
latter. The LTTE first launched a direct attack on the village in September
1991, killing 16 civilians. One of the attackers, possibly the leader, was killed
by the defenders - an achievement that gave satisfaction to the poorly armed
villagers, which in turn would have further angered the LTTE.

(3) believes that the direct cause of the
massacre at Palliyagodelle was that some homeguards from Palliyagodelle had
taken part in the reprisals against the Tamil villages of Muthugala and Karapola
5 ½ months earlier. Two or more Sinhalese from that area were reportedly abducted
by the LTTE prior to the massacre and were released subsequently. It
is believed that they were used an information source on the villages and surroundings.

Concerning the role
of girls and of very young cadre in the attack, an observation made by several
people and also suggested by the reporting in (2), is that these were
new recruits deliberately brought in to harden them against taking human life,
particularly of persons who were helpless, as the group required. Having been
taught that all Muslims were traitors, they would have had little difficulty
in killing unarmed Muslim men against all traditions of heroism. But to their
youthful sensibilities, even at this stage of brutalization, there seems to
have been some inhibition against killing women and children. One attackers
reason for killing a mother appears to have been that the mother had recognised
him and he therefore feared repercussions against his own family. The looting
further underlines the level at which this liberation group operates.

What is problematic here are not the massacres
themselves, but the widely talked about role of civilians. The people of Alinchipotanai
believe that the LTTE met some of the villagers of Karapola in the village
itself and conferred with them about the attacks that took place 5 days later.
A delegation that came to the Muslims from these villages to discuss the redemption
of mortgaged Tamil lands is seen in retrospect as an LTTE instigated
camouflage operation to divert attention from the real reason for the LTTEs
presence. Soon after they had been attacked (a partial attack on about a third
of the village, apparently to drive them out) the Muslims quickly formed the
impression that the Tamils were collectively behind the outrage - an erroneous,
but common, mutual impression in the East, eg. Sammanthurai and its Tamil neighbour
Veeramunai through the vicissitudes of the last few years.

We feel uncomfortable with such conclusions.
Two things are almost certain. Under the bullish dispensation of the Sri Lankan
army and the threat of colonisation, it is inevitable that the LTTE would
have picked up recruits from the Tamil villages. The two Tamil villages, like
the Muslim village are small, each having 600-800 persons. Any visit by the
LTTE to one of the Tamil villages would have been widely known
to the Tamils, as the Muslims knew and the Sri Lankan police at Karapola do
not seem to have had an inkling of. But the claim that Tamils in general knew
about the coming attack in Alinchipotanai can be ruled out. Such a claim would
have involved more than 1000 people keeping a secret that was bound to cost
them dearly. These were two small isolated Tamil villages in a hostile environment.
They would have known the nature of repercussions. Their testimonies in (1)
show that they were not suicidal maniacs driven by hatred.

The men among the survivors of Karapola
said that they were remaining in the village rather than move to a safe area
because they were anxious not to give the impression that they were party to
the attack on Allinchpotana (Those in Muthugala were evidently not allowed to
move). This can virtually be taken as proof that the men concerned were not
involved, nor could they have approved of what took place. Anyone who took part
had some chance of being identified, as several of them were. Those from the
village who took part in the night attack, by the accounts given, appear to
have been reckless using their familiar voices and calling one another by name.

By morning the Tamil villagers would
have had some idea of what happened the previous night in the Muslim village,
given all that shooting. Knowing the possible consequences why did most of the
Tamil villagers sit pretty waiting for the armed authorities to arrive, instead
of taking to the jungle as they did later? The only possible answer seems to
be that the villagers were in a panic. After conferring briefly they would have
assumed that army would be on the way and anyone found missing would have become
suspect. They would have concluded that staying put was the best strategy. (1)
also points out that goods looted from the Muslim village, if searched for,
were not found in the Tamil villages.

Normally anyone from the Tamil villages
who got wind that an attack on the Muslim village was being planned would have
expressed their anxiety at least to cadre known to them, particularly from their
village. Such cadre, as we have recorded in previous reports, are often anxious
to shield their families and their villages. This points to a decision to attack
taken at a higher level.

In such instances the LTTE is
even callous enough to assure the villagers that nothing would happen to them.
We have recorded how the LTTE have in many instances fired at advancing
troops of the IPKF from civilian positions and then ran away after assuring
the protesting civilians that the troops would do nothing to them.

How about the Tamil civilians who co-operated
in the LTTE attack? One accused by the Muslims is a postman and another
a school mistress or two who taught Muslim children. These persons had regular
human contact with Muslims. They are accused of having provided information
on houses with a large number of children to be targeted for elimination. For
a young woman to plan the elimination of children she talked and played with
is very unusual. If these allegations have substance, and these persons had
co-operated under duress, would they not have whispered a warning to some Muslim?
Or were they so terrorised? On the other hand if they had co-operated cold-bloodedly,
they would have harboured some deep hatred for the Muslims or were hard-core
LTTE operators who could act mechanically. Strangely the postman had
remained with his family at Muthugala and was killed according to (1)!

The presence of Muslim civilians among
those who took reprisals on the Tamils is explainable in terms of spontaneous
anger. The presence of Tamil civilians among those who attacked the Muslims
is far less easy to explain. Did some of them lose close relatives to the forces
when the army was stationed in the Muslim village and went about with homeguards?

There is a great deal that we do not
understand. Perhaps finding out the truth requires long term confidence building
with the villagers and cannot be elicited in a day or two, however valuable
information so elicited may be.

According to (1), Tamil villagers
had said that there were Tamil civilians among the attackers, but they had left
the area a long time ago. The content of that answer has no straightforward
explanation. (2) gives us an instance of defensive answering. Palliyagodelle
had a Tamil barber who was among the victims of the LTTE massacre. He
had been married to a lady from Eravur, whose son by a previous marriage had
spent much time in Palliyagodelle. Shortly after the June 1990 war he seems
to have joined the LTTE. The lady solved the delicate problem of explaining
her loss of contact with him by saying that he had been killed in the violence
around Eravur at that time. It is suggested that a Muslim lady had recognised
this boy as being among the attackers, and was in turn shot and wounded by this
boy who wished to protect his parents. Such has been the web of violence in
which people have been caught up doing things they never dreamt of.

A three man committee of inquiry consisting of a retired
supreme court judge a senior police officer and a senior army officer went into
the massacres of 30th April 1992 and based on its findings
some Muslims who attacked the Tamil villagers were charged. The report,
as far as we are aware, is not public. We were told by a well placed journalistic
source that at the request of higher authorities it was re-written to move the
colouring of the armys conduct so as the lighten the shade of complicity
and have a heavier shade of negligence, which is not so culpable. The police
were reprimanded. But no further action is envisaged.

(1) makes a pertinent observation which
suggests that the ideological basis of the armys role in the region had
driven it to cultivate exclusively Muslims as sources of information and hence
be in a permanent antagonistic position to the Tamils. On the other hand,
Tamils would not readily give information unless they see some legitimacy in
the armys role. This will never be as long as the army is seen to spearhead
the ideological agenda of Sinhalese colonisation by force of arms.

It is notable that the STF in the Amparai District
has fared much better. This was helped by the fact that there is no major effort
at colonisation in the area, and a political decision was taken to return Tamils
to the villages, from which they were driven out, under STF security.
These measures made a more - even handed role for the STF possible. To
a good extent there is trust in the intentions of the STF, and its sources
of intelligence now are probably mostly Tamil. It thus seems to be in a better
position to take pre-emptive action against any disruptive moves. This is very
different from the situation in Welikanda. Unless a political decision is taken
to ensure that the minorities are equal partners in the Mahaveli project, their
fears are listened to and the partisan colouring and secretiveness which recent
history has given the project are removed, the army will be trapped into a position
of antagonism to the Tamil people. Then little will change.